>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 01/22/01 05:32PM >>>
>Oh, for heaven's sake, Charles. Have you read, e.g., Finkelstein's
>book on jazz, treating it as "folk music"? The CP had a mechanical
>view directly linking class to art ("proletarian literature"),
>treating art more less purely instrumentally, hostile to modernism,
>intolerant of ambiguity. Ask yourself why the Party couldn't keep
>Richard Wright. But it did see culture as an important field of
>struggle. --jks
The CP critics, oftentimes, suffered from the very failings that you mention. In contrast, _artists_ in the CP -- e.g., Tillie Olsen, Bertolt Brecht, Tina Modotti, Pablo Picasso, Sergei Eisenstein, etc. -- & more broadly artists within or close to the Popular Front culture -- e.g., Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Orson Welles, Luis Bunuel, etc. -- not only were not hostile to modernism; in many cases -- _especially Brecht, Picasso, Welles, & Eisenstein_ -- they were the best embodiments of modernism, whose styles _& theories_ have continued to influence artists of later generations (including artists who are un- or even anti-Marxists).
Even the quintessence of literary modernist _excess_ Goerges Bataille was briefly part of the Popular Front!
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CB: CP is substantially correct. Jazz is folk music. Urban folk music, proletarian party ( i.e. cabaret/juke joint music). Please point out how the approach is mechanical.
Finkelstein is an odd choice to a try to make out an argument of unsophisticated analysis of jazz. His aesthetic sensibility and intellect certainly equal or surpass that on this thread.
Angela Davis, a product of CP philosophy, professionally trained philosopher, and philosopher, has her latest book on blues and jazz. She seems fully aware of the aesthetic issues you list.
Richard Wright had no special affinity with jazz that I recall, but if you are talking about art and artists and the Party in general, see Yoshie's brief comment.